For the last few days, I've been
removing old drywall. The powers that
be (the local regional district) scare
the bejeezus out of you about it. I
geared up. Respirator, Safety glasses,
Tyvek suit (with hood and built in
booties, like kids pajamas). I sprayed
the walls and floor with a pump-type
sprayer as I worked. I double-bagged
the drywall in 6 mil poly bags and
duct taped the bags closed. As I
worked, I thought about how I sanded
drywall with my dad when I was a kid.
That was the very same drywall mud
that they scare you about now. If it
was as dangerous as they make it out
to be, I'd be dead. Anyways....
So I take it all to the local
landfill, with my asbestos declaration
form, expecting that they'll have some
secret, arcane protocol for handling
it. Not even close. The attendant says
to throw it in the bin with the
household refuse. Are you sure, I say?
"Yes, you double bagged it." Really, I
say? "Yes." Okay.
So I went through all of this work to
minimize dust as I pulled the drywall
down (which I'd do again... it worked
so well and there's no dust in the
rest of the house) and hermetically
seal the stuff away in super-heavy,
ridiculously-expensive bags and then
it goes in the big bin with everything
else. This means that some poor
bastard driving a loader is pushing
that stuff everyday, breaking the bags
open (they're strong bags, but they're
not strong enough to survive the
loader bucket), and getting exposed to
the dust on a regular basis. I really
need to write a letter to the regional
district. It was all so pointless.
Well, I guess *I* didn't breathe much
of it.
Not much else is going on. I had a
brief obsession with the idea of
buying a ThinkPad T440p (it and the
L440 are the last completely
user-upgradeable ThinkPads), but
stopped myself. I have been using a
ThinkPad R500 for years and there's
nothing wrong with it. I just get
these tech cravings every once it a
while. It's better to let them pass
than to act on them.
Oh, the other thing is that I managed
to move my gopher server to a
Raspberry Pi Zero W, which will reduce
the energy use from 7-10 watts to 1-2
watts. It was a little difficult
because the LXer mirror makes use of
Raymii's totext.py, and I was having
trouble installing some python modules
on the Zero. Eventually, I stumbled
across a low-memory command line
switch and that did the trick. It
takes the Zero about 20 minutes to run
the totext.py script. It used to be a
lot faster, but time is *not* of the
essence in this case.
